Album Details

• Artist: Conure
• Album: The Generation Of Our Grandfathers
• Label: Edgetone
• Year of Release: 2007
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: patchen on 2007-09-27

It doesn’t often happen anymore these days, but back in the early days of American music, especially in blues and country, the response song was big. Usually the response was a dis of the original track, or a rebuttal in the form of a boast. "Generation of Our Grandfathers" is a musical response, an emotional reaction to a film, by artist Mark Wilson (15 Degrees Below Zero) under the moniker Conure. The film in question is the HBO documentary "Paragraph 175," which dealt with the Nazi penal code criminalizing homosexuals. Using an ambient soundscape with lo-fi production, the six cuts express sadness, grief, guilt, and shock; there is a mood of oral history, of looking back in fear and also with admiration for those who survived persecution. "Some Vowed Absitnence" and "Some Choose Exile", along with "We Thought of Ourselves As Germans First" are haunting and at times unbearably fragile, but there is a also a strength to them, a resolve to resist, to survive, that is comparable to any other struggle against oppression in history, and today. A salute to bravery, and a spotlight on those to be remembered, Conure’s "The Generation of Our Grandfathers" is a moody, poetic gem that may not be easy listening, but is essential listening.

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